SUNY Cortland - Severed Finger 11/5/08

I was standing outside my doorway when an 18 y/o male came stumbling by holding his hand, blood dripping down his arm. I basically grabbed the kid, grabbed my gloves and brought him into the bathroom...

He had his hand holding onto the hinges of his door, when his roomate, not knowing he was there, kicked the door shut, cutting off his roomates left pointer (top of finger). The door cut right through the bone, and only skin was holding the top of the finger onto his hand. I made a kid grab a small towel, and I tightly raped his finger to stop the bleeding. - 8 minutes later, the EMT's arrived to take him to the hospital. - According to the EMT's, seems like the top of his finger is lost. Seemed to be dead.

Question is: Is there anything else I could have done for this kid? I got him water, sat him down in a chair and help his hand over the sink (without turning the water on.... it would have taken the entire top of the finger off) - Should I have put ice on the finger? I may have been possibly able to save it?

Ladder 49Jack Morrison: There's something I wanted to talk to you about, Cap. I was thinking of transferring to the truck. Captain Kennedy: Oh, geez. What the hell do you want to do that for?

Re: SUNY Cortland - Severed Finger 11/5/08

A few years ago i got responded to a worker at a grocery store who got his hand crushed by a pallet jack... we walk in to find him sitting on a box bleeding, just staring at his pinky and ring finger which were laying on the floor....Put a rush on the bus, ETA is still like 15 mins, of course EMS is in backlog...so i go into the main area of the store, take a few dish towels off the shelf, a big zip lock bag and and a bag of ice...i use one of the towels to wrap his two detatched fingers in and i put them on ice, then i use the other towels and wrap up his bloody hand....throw him into the back seat of the police car and race him to Jamaica Hospital.

about a year and a half later, im at that supermarket for some kind of bs and the guy comes up to me, and thanks me, almost in tears, for saving his hand...both fingers were re-attached and worked pretty close to normal....i was pretty impressed w/ my self .

Re: SUNY Cortland - Severed Finger 11/5/08

...relevant to this thread, but not this individual case...

I heard that a severed finger [aka Liberated Limb] needs to be sealed inside a plastic bag first, then put on ice. But if the amputated body part gets put directly on the ice, it gets contaminated and is unable to be used. True or False?

P.S. If a finger is raped, wouldn't that be toned out as a genital alarm?